Nothin' but Net: Can we start liking Kobe?

Is it possible that during this season of intense tribulation and constant media scrutiny, Bryant has become something of a sympathetic figure?

Bryant is not accustomed to losing. In his surefire Hall of Fame career,
Bryant has won five NBA Championships and his legacy leaves him somewhere
between the top-three and top-10 players of all time.

This season has been a disaster from the jump.

Steve Nash broke his leg in the second game.

Head coach Mike Brown got shown the door a few games later.

Mike D'Antoni does no better.

Pau Gasol gets hurt, then gets benched, then gets hurt again and all the while
he's been messed around more than a freshman frat pledge.

Dwight Howard can't get on the same page with almost anyone. His shoulder is
killing him, probably requires surgery and his pending free agency looms in
the air like a thick, L.A. smog.

Then, there's Bryant.

Throughout this turbulent season, Bryant has tried almost every avenue at his
disposal to get results. He's scored at an obscene rate, or dished the ball out
like he was a reincarnation of a taller John Stockton. Mamba's tried going
with the flow and he's tried calling his teammates, especially Howard, out on
the carpet.

"We don't have time for (Howard's shoulder) to heal," Bryant told ESPN's
Jackie MacMullan on Wednesday. "We need some urgency."

That was taken by most to imply in some way that Howard should be on the
court, not in the trainer's room. Injuries and pain threshold are individual.
Questioning Howard's toughness is not a smart street to go down. Howard played
with a severe back injury last season, and truth be told, probably came back
from it too early to start this one.

Maybe, what Bryant was saying to MacMullan was that time is running out on
this Lakers' season quickly. They've gone 7-3 over their last 10 and are still
3 1/2 games out of the eighth seed in the Western Conference.

He was right, they don't have time to heal.

Yet, Bryant had to know that his comments would be taken as a call for Howard
to get his torn labrum on the court. He did that Thursday night and the Lakers
lost to the Celtics.

Bryant made clear that he wasn't trying to rile up his large teammate when he
spoke with Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski.

"Listen, I really think people ran in the wrong direction with those quotes,"
Bryant told Wojnarowski, speaking of the quotes in MacMullan's story. "And I
think that put Dwight on the defense, put him a little on edge.

"But that wasn't the intention, nor the purpose. I didn't say anything earth-
shattering. I didn't say anything I haven't been saying all year.

"Honestly, I didn't take a run at him."

If we take Bryant at his word, which involves a trust he may not have earned,
but if we do, what has Bryant done other than speaking his mind? Let's be
honest, maybe Bryant didn't "take a run at him," but Bryant had a message and
it was received.

Isn't that some form of leadership? Bryant appears to be doing everything
short of rubbing two sticks together to light a fire under this team, and
Howard in particular. Maybe, he felt he had no choice but to use the media to
get his message across.

There are a lot of maybes in this theory, but there are reasonable answers as
well. Bryant was absolutely correct, the Lakers don't have time for Howard's
shoulder to heal. They need wins badly. L.A. has played 52 games already. Only
30 left and a good chunk of them will be without the services of Pau Gasol,
who Bryant is clearly comfortable with and clearly handles softer than Howard.

This premise has as much to do with how you perceive Bryant than anything
else. If you don't like him, then he's a bad guy picking on a hurt teammate.
If you're alright with him, then he's trying his best to do everything in his
power.

Bryant even changed his style on court. Over the last 10 games, Bryant has
averaged 8.2 apg trying to facilitate the offense. Over the same span,
Bryant's scoring has gone down to 19.7 ppg. The Lakers went 7-3.

That's a pretty remarkable amount of discipline to incorporate your teammates
more into the offense.

Off the court, Bryant is talking, and he uses more profanity with the media
than any player in the league. It's like listening to Sam Kinison in his
prime.

But Bryant also took to Twitter. Mock it if you will, but Bryant takes time to
answer fans questions, talk back to them and last week, the Lakers tweeted a
picture of him playing piano in a hotel lobby.

How can you not like that?

Plus, Bryant scolded a couple of tweeters for posting homophobic slurs
recently, owning his past when he was fined for using inappropriate language
like that.

So many athletes want nothing to do with any issue and Bryant is trying to
make a difference.

Bryant has many faults and his past is littered with a large lapse in
judgement. But Bryant knows he's at the end of his career. The expectations on
this team were massive and they are nowhere near living up to them.

Bryant knows that reflects on him. He is trying to get whatever he can out of
Howard. It doesn't appear to working, but Bryant's reached his end. He doesn't
know what else he can do.

It seems like attempts at leadership to me. That should be applauded, not
deemed the ninth most-hated anything.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

- The Atlanta Hawks are in a bind. If they trade Josh Smith before the
deadline, they could get a haul for him and help the franchise for the future.
If they move him, the Hawks will have very little chance of signing Howard in
the offseason. Howard and Smith are tight and they have money for both. This
isn't an easy decision.

- Rumored Ben Gordon for Kris Humphries trade stories make sense to me if I
was in the Brooklyn Nets' front office. Gordon could play in a smaller lineup
at the end of games with Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Gerald Wallace and Brook
Lopez. Coincidentally, that would be a better matchup late in games against
the New York Knicks who employ Carmelo Anthony at the big forward spot. Why
the Charlotte Bobcats would want Kris Humphries back is a question mark.
Humphries has real value, but not to a rebuilding team. He's not a long-term
answer for Charlotte. Humprhies would be better-served on a good team as a 20-
minute a night rebounder. Kind of like how the Nets have been using him.

- My dark-horse MVP candidate is Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs, the
most underrated superstar of this generation.

- I think you'll see a lot of roster changes for Sunday's All-Star game this
week with Joakim Noah, Tim Duncan, Chris Paul and Howard all a little dinged
up.

- Movie moment - Ever liked a movie, but can't watch it a second time? I have
two of those on my list - "In the Bedroom," and "American History X." Caught
the second one again this week and it's just as disturbing as anything I've
ever seen. Can't wait for another 11 years to go by between viewings.

- TV moment - The Grammys were riveting television. I couldn't wait to watch
how Taylor Swift would dance to the next performance. Or Ellen Degeneres for
that matter. Exciting.